Brazil

The Exame Nacional do Ensino Médio (National High School Exam), better known as the ENEM, is a non-compulsory end-of-high school exam that has come under fire due to attendance levels, disruptions and leaked questions. While 5.8 million people registered for the exam, 28 percent failed to attend nationally (25 percent in Rio). Since 2009, the MOE proposed all universities should use the exam as a standard entrance qualification test. Therefore, ENEM exam results are essential to student’s success within a university system that has limited spaces available. Education Minister Aliozio Mercadante noted that space is further limited for many white middle-class students after a fifty-percent quota was introduced to increase the number of university students from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds.